How do social media and internet usage look like in the eyes of ageing people, specifically

those at the age of 80 years or above that live independently? What technologies are most

interesting to them and why? What do they struggle with that could lead them to avoid specific

technologies or to prefer one technology more than others? The reason of the study was to get

an insight of elderlies attitudes, regarding technologies in general and social media specifically,

to know what hinders those seniors to be excluded of the recent technologies and to not be

plugged into cyberspace. The specific questions that the research wanted to answer were

“What are the actual barriers for internet use among the elderly?” and “Also, what could be

done to address these barriers?”. The study was taking place in one retirement house in

Skellefteå with 4 women at the desired age group and was carried out using semi-structured

interviews mixed with focus groups as the method for data gathering. This research will be

assisting an EU funded project aimed to start in the summer of 2017 named PLACE-EE and is

planned to be a platform for ageing community engagement. The results showed that more

technical and human support were required in a local environment. The elderly simply did not

have the drive to personally engage themselves actively in technology to use the internet or

social media among other things. One of the suggestions made to solve this would be to

integrate the technology into their daily routines where they are socially active, like the

community centers that they valued quite a lot.